Nournews: It has only been two days since the multi-day farewell, funeral, and burial ceremony of the Leader of the Revolution, yet international media outlets have described the remarkable presence of the Iranian people at Tehran’s Mosalla with unprecedented terms. These outlets, expressing astonishment at the resilience of Iranians after a brutal forty-day war, admitted that the strategy of creating a rift between the people and the ruling system had failed. More importantly, CNN, the well-known and reputable American media outlet, described the farewell ceremony as a “victory parade” of the Iranian people. This admission, in itself, reflects Iran’s upper hand in the war of narratives—a war as important as the military one.
Wars do not always end on the battlefield. Sometimes the final scene of war is not in the skies or on missile fronts, but in the streets of a country and in ceremonies of mourning and farewell for leaders and heroes. That is why the funerals of political leaders in many countries are more than mere mourning rituals; they are geopolitical events—moments in which the world attempts to reassess the relationship between state, nation, and power.
The farewell ceremony and prayer over the body of Iran’s martyred leader were of this nature as well. What millions of Iranians and dozens of foreign delegations displayed was not merely sorrowful mourning; it was a representation of a form of “national resilience” that, after months of war, pressure, sanctions, psychological operations, and attempts to collapse the political structure, was placed before the eyes of the world. For this reason, some international media described the ceremony not as a simple farewell, but as a symbol of the end of a phase of confrontation and a demonstration of the continuity of Iran’s power.
If this interpretation is properly understood, it carries a meaning far beyond a news headline.
In the literature of strategic studies, the ultimate goal of war is not merely the destruction of military equipment. What major theorists of war argue is that war is a tool to break the “political will” of the opponent. An army that has weapons but lacks the will to resist is defeated; just as a country that still stands but has lost its national will is, in effect, already defeated.
The strategy designed against Iran was also based precisely on this logic: eliminating the leader, creating a leadership vacuum, intensifying social divisions, stimulating public dissatisfaction, and ultimately causing internal collapse. In fact, military operations were only part of the project; the more important part was cognitive and psychological warfare aimed at promoting the idea that “the system can no longer reproduce itself.” However, the farewell ceremony stood in direct opposition to this narrative.
The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu speaks of a concept called “symbolic capital”—a form of capital produced not by money or weapons, but by social acceptance and public legitimacy. States are powerful when they can reveal this capital in moments of crisis. The farewell ceremony for the martyred leader, even as it stands after its second day, became precisely a field for the emergence of this capital. Millions of people did not come merely to bid farewell to a historical figure; they effectively conveyed the message that the bond between a significant part of society and the political structure, contrary to the enemy’s assumptions, remains mobilizable.
But the significance of the event was not limited to the domestic sphere.
Joseph Nye, the theorist of soft power, argues that countries are not influential solely through military strength; the ability to shape perceptions is also part of power. If war is the domain of hard power, the farewell ceremony became a field of Iran’s soft power. Images of massive public participation and foreign delegations created a narrative that contrasted sharply with what psychological operations centers had tried to project over recent months. In effect, Iran was reconstructing its narrative in regional and global public opinion without firing a single bullet.
Perhaps the most important message of this ceremony lies in the concept of “state continuity.”
Modern states fail when their power transition becomes a crisis. Contemporary history is full of countries that, after the removal of a leader, descended into civil war, institutional collapse, or foreign intervention. What happened in Iran, at least at the institutional level, told a different story: legal processes continued, no power vacuum emerged, institutions kept functioning, and society, instead of chaos, witnessed one of the largest public ceremonies in its modern history. This is the point at which one can speak of the “failure of the decapitation strategy.”
Of course, any strategic victory, if it does not lead to internal reform, can turn into a lost opportunity.
The reality is that social capital, contrary to what some politicians assume, is not fixed. It is either converted into efficiency or gradually depleted. The people who demonstrated national cohesion during days of war and mourning are the same people who, in normal times, demand justice, welfare, transparency, anti-corruption measures, legal freedoms, and hope for the future.
Here, a distinction must be made between “victory in war” and “victory after war.” Victory in war means thwarting the enemy’s objectives; but victory after war means building a more efficient state, a stronger economy, and a more hopeful society. History shows that many countries have won on the battlefield but lost in governance, because they failed to transform the capital granted by the people in critical moments into structural reform.
From this perspective, the farewell ceremony for the martyred leader should be seen not as the end of a narrative, but as the beginning of a new responsibility. If this ceremony was a “victory parade,” then this victory was, above all, the victory of national cohesion over a fragmentation project; the victory of institutional continuity over destabilization strategy; and the victory of national will over cognitive warfare.
Nournews